I stopped counting the days when the sky forgot how to change.
There was no sun in this place, not really—just a dull silver haze that hovered above the ruin like a fever dream refusing to break. It made everything look like it had been dead longer than it had.
My hands were always bleeding. The stone here cut like it wanted to. I used to try wrapping cloth around my palms, but the guards took it. They always took the things I tried to hide. So I worked with bare hands. Let them split. Let them scar. At least pain was proof I hadn't gone fully numb.
The ruin—if that's even what it was—felt like it remembered being something else. The walls shifted when you weren't looking. Sometimes I'd leave a mark on a corner to trace my way back and the next day, the mark would be gone. Or the wall would be gone. Or the corner.
I didn't ask questions. There was no one to ask.
The Warden watched me.
He didn't speak. He never did. But I felt him. Like a sickness under my skin. I'd be dragging a slab of stone across the courtyard, and I'd turn, and there he was—at the edge of the upper walk, arms folded behind his back, mask tilted just enough that I could feel the weight of his eyes through the holes.
Sometimes I imagined throwing the rock at him. Or jumping the railing and driving my elbow into his throat. But then I'd blink, and the vision would melt. And I'd be back where I was, under the haze, bleeding.
I dreamed of him sometimes. Not like nightmares. More like… puzzles. In the dreams, he'd open his mouth and moths would fly out, and I'd chase them, trying to grab them and swallow them before they escaped. If I caught one, I thought maybe I'd understand something. But I never did. They always vanished before I could close my hands. Like the truth didn't want me.
I tried to escape.
Once, I waited until the guards changed—until the second bell, when the gates shifted open for the supply caravan. I slipped behind a cart. I thought I was clever.
I made it ten steps before a hand grabbed the back of my shirt and threw me to the dirt like I was a sack of rot.
They didn't beat me that time. Just stared at me until I got up and walked back inside. I think that was worse.
The second time, I didn't try clever. I just ran.
Straight through the west corridor. Over the broken fence. Into the woods where the light curved like teeth.
I lasted longer that time.
Almost made it to the edge of something—I don't know what. The trees got thinner, and I saw a clearing.
Then the world blinked.
And suddenly I was lying on my back in the courtyard, ribs cracked, face bruised, Warden standing over me like I'd never moved at all.
That's when I started to lose track of what was real.
My thoughts frayed at the edges. Some days I heard my own voice when I hadn't spoken. Some nights I felt fingers on my arm in the dark, but when I turned, nothing was there.
Worse than the hallucinations were the whispers.
They didn't sound like ghosts. They sounded like me.
Or like Solas.
Or like things we'd never said but somehow did.
"You promised you'd never leave."
"I didn't."
"Then why aren't you here?"
I started speaking to them.
Not aloud. Just in my head.
I knew that made it worse, but what else was I supposed to do?
I didn't cry. I'd forgotten how.
But I did hum, sometimes. Little broken pieces of melodies Solas used to make up. Nothing complete. Just three or four notes, repeated until they stopped hurting.
I still remember his face.
But his voice—it was getting thinner. Like I had to hold it in my mind or it would drip through my fingers.
The third escape ended with a fractured shoulder and three missing fingernails. I don't remember how. I remember crawling across wet stone, sobbing, trying to scream but my throat wouldn't open.
I lay there until morning.
The Warden watched me from above.
He didn't move.
He never did.
I hate him.
No. That's not true.
I want to hate him.
But hate is too clean. Too sharp.
What I feel when I look at him is older than that. Like a memory I'm not allowed to have.
Some days, I wonder if he's not real. If he's just the shape my grief took when it gave up on words.
But then he shifts.
Tilts his head.
Watches.
And I remember I'm still in the game.
Only this time, the rules are written in blood.
And I don't know which name I'm supposed to lose.
…
I didn't expect her voice.
It came in the middle of a dream—one where the Warden was peeling skin from my feet to sew into a flag, and Solas was laughing, but not like himself. When I woke, I was gasping, head pressed to the cold stone floor.
And then—
"Hey," a voice whispered, barely louder than breath. "You awake?"
My heart stopped. Just for a second.
Then: "Don't scream. I swear I'm not a ghost. Unless I died recently. I'm not sure anymore."
Silence.
Then me, stupidly: "...What?"
A soft laugh. An actual laugh. It didn't sound like it belonged in this world. Which is why I wanted to keep it.
"There we go. You're not deaf. That's step one."
I pushed myself up. My cell was the same—it always was. Damp stone. One cot. One bucket. Iron bars. No door on the inside. The usual.
But now, there was a voice.
Not in my head.
Next cell over.
"I didn't know there was anyone next to me," I said.
"You wouldn't. They don't keep us side by side unless they're running out of space."
I crawled to the wall. Pressed my face against the cracks. "How long have you been here?"
A pause.
"...I stopped counting at three hundred."
"Days?"
"Seams in the stone. I don't think time works properly anymore."
"Yeah," I whispered. "Yeah, I get that."
A long quiet stretched between us. Comfortable, almost. Strange how fast I got used to it.
Then she said, "You got a name?"
I hesitated.
Not because I didn't want to tell her.
Because I couldn't remember if I had one anymore.
"Aevira," I said.
"Nice. I'm Elara. Probably. You sound tired, Aevira."
"I'm always tired."
"Good. Then you're still real."
We talked more after that.
Not a lot. Just pieces. Bits. She told me she used to steal bread from a bakery that never locked its window. Said once she found a firefly inside a skull and kept it in a jar for two weeks. Said the Warden never came to her cell, only passed by, like he was scared of her.
I didn't believe that part.
But I liked the way she said it—like it didn't matter if it was true.
When she asked what I did before this, I lied. Told her I was a singer. That I'd performed in a hall with stained-glass ceilings. That people used to weep when they heard my voice.
She said, "That sounds sad."
"Why?"
"Because it sounds like it mattered to you. And now it's gone."
I didn't know what to say to that.
We played games, later. Not the kind Solas and I played—those were sacred. These were different. Quick. Ugly. Survival games. "What would you trade your teeth for?" "If you could break any bone in the Warden's body, which would you pick first?" "If you could send one word back in time, what would it be?"
"Stay," I said once.
She went quiet for a long time.
"Yeah," she said finally. "That's a good one."
It hurt. Not because it reminded me of Solas—but because it made me forget him, just for a minute. Like Elara had shoved her voice between me and the wound, and it fit.
We started planning.
Nothing grand. Just whispers between walls.
She said she'd heard one of the guards was new. That he forgot to lock her cell right last week. That maybe if we timed it right—if I picked my hinge and she kicked hers—
I didn't think it would work.
But I didn't care.
Because she was laughing when she said it. And that sound made the stone feel less alive. Less like it was breathing down my neck.
I think I smiled.
Not fully. Not the way I used to.
But my face cracked in the right direction. My lips moved.
It hurt.
Elara didn't know what that meant. She just kept whispering plans, like we were already halfway out.
Like we were already free.
We made the mistake of believing it mattered.
The plan was simple. So simple it felt like a trick—like the world was holding its breath just to laugh when it failed.
Elara said the new guard always stopped outside her cell to light his lantern, his hands fumbling with the matches. Said the bolt didn't click in all the way. She'd been testing it with her shoulder at night, little by little.
My hinge was rusted. I'd been scraping it with a stone I wasn't supposed to have. It cut into my palm every time I worked at it, and I started to like the feeling. It reminded me I still had a body. A shape. A self.
The signal was three knocks.
That was the last thing we agreed on.
That night, the air was thick. Like it had something stuck in its throat. I waited in the corner, fists clenched, whispering her name under my breath like it could protect her. "Elara. Elara. Elara."
Three knocks.
I moved fast.
Kicked the hinge.
Metal screamed.
Another kick. Another.
It cracked.
I shoved, and the bars gave way.
My legs burned with sudden motion. I limped through the hall, heart in my throat, breath raw in my chest.
Then I heard it.
Screaming, real and small and sharp enough to bleed.
I ran anyway.
I reached the corridor where the cells narrowed and twisted, and saw two guards dragging her across the floor.
She was thrashing.
One of them struck her with the butt of a pike and she went limp. Like something turned her off.
I don't remember running.
I remember hitting the first guard hard enough to break something in my hand.
I remember falling.
I remember the second guard swinging low and my ribs lighting up with white pain.
They didn't even ask questions.
Didn't speak.
They just beat me until I couldn't stand.
Then they left me there, half-facedown in the mud, wheezing like a dying animal.
I don't know how long I lay there.
Hours, maybe. The ruin didn't care. It didn't keep time.
My face was hot and wet. My breath made bubbles in the dirt. My shoulder throbbed in pulses that didn't line up with my heartbeat.
Eventually, I crawled.
I don't know why.
I dragged myself across the ground like a snake that had forgotten how to slither.
And I found her.
She was still warm.
Her eyes were open.
The blood made a shape across her cheek that looked like a handprint.
I touched her.
Said her name.
She didn't blink.
Didn't twitch.
I think I said her name again.
I must've.
My mouth was moving.
But no sound came out.
I pressed my forehead to hers and closed my eyes.
And for a moment—
I wasn't alone.
There was a voice in my head.
Not Elara's.
Not Solas's.
Mine.
But not mine now.
Mine, broken.
It said: She was just a girl. That's all. And you let her believe you could get out.
And then, lower:
You knew you'd fail. But you wanted to try anyway. Because she smiled. And you wanted to believe that meant something.
My mouth trembled.
I tried to say no.
But the word wouldn't come.
I held her until her skin went cold.
Until my arms gave up.
Until the silence pressed so hard it carved words into my ribs.
Names I couldn't say.
Memories I couldn't keep.
"I forget what my voice sounded like," I thought.
The world didn't answer.
"But I remember his."
And then everything went black.
Rule Eight: Don't promise what you can't protect.